Chapter 12
The Short Walk of Shame
Iwake up alone again.
The sheets are cold on Hex’s side of the bed. Not that it is his side of the bed. He doesn’t have a side. He’s not my boyfriend. We are being civilised about this, but he’s still not anything that gets an allocated side of the bed.
I stare at the ceiling and have a very stern word with myself. I knew this was what it was going to be. He told me, right at the start, that he needed to feed. He never professed anything romantic.
Last night he said he needed to feed until he was strong enough to go back to the Shadow Realm and take his throne back. He has never pretended otherwise. He has never lied to me about any of it.
So waking up alone is fine. It’s expected. It’s what happens when you invite a shadow creature into your bed for reasons that are entirely transactional, even if the transaction is admittedly very good for both parties.
I am an adult. I can handle this.
I sit up, and my body immediately lodges several complaints. All of them entirely Hex’s fault. All of them weirdly satisfying. I press my lips together and refuse to smile about it because smiling about it would be very embarrassing, even though there is no one here to see me, but I would know.
I drag myself out of bed and shuffle towards the kitchen. My eyes feel gritty. My hair is doing something architecturally ambitious. I desperately need coffee, or I’m going to be absolutely useless to anyone, including myself.
The blinds are down in the kitchen, making the room dim and grey.
I fumble for the kettle and fill it on autopilot, blinking slowly, not quite awake.
I reach for the coffee jar. I grab a mug.
I do all the things in the correct order because my body has done this enough times that it doesn’t require any brain involvement.
It’s only when I’m waiting for the kettle to boil that I become dimly aware of something. A slight chill in the air. That familiar press of darkness in the periphery of my vision.
Oh.
I turn around very slowly. Hex is in the corner, leaning against the kitchen wall with his arms crossed and his red eyes glowing soft as embers in the dim light.
He looks infuriatingly comfortable. He looks like he has been standing there for some time.
He looks like he finds my shuffling, groggy morning routine deeply entertaining.
I nearly jump clean out of my skin. My hand flies to my chest. The kettle chooses this exact moment to start its deafening boil.
“Good morning,” says Hex pleasantly.
“You’re here!” My voice comes out somewhere in the register usually reserved for startled pigeons.
“I am.” He tilts his head. “You seem surprised.”
“You were gone!” I press my hand harder against my chest, as if I can physically encourage my heart to stop doing what it’s doing. “I woke up and you were gone and I thought...”
I stop talking. Because I was going to say something embarrassing. And I’m not going to say that. I have some dignity left. Not much, but some.
“I can’t maintain full form in daylight,” Hex says, pushing off the wall. He moves to the stove with that fluid grace that makes everything look effortless. “Not yet. It takes too much energy. I can manage it for short periods, but not all night and all morning too.”
He picks up the kettle, which has just finished its violent boiling fit, and pours the water into my mug with more elegance than anyone has any right to bring to instant coffee.
I stare at him. “Are you making me coffee?”
“I’m aware it’s the minimum requirement before you become a functional person.” He stirs it, places the mug on the table, and pulls out the chair with a pointed look. “Sit.”
I sit. Mainly because my legs are still a bit unreliable and also because being told what to do by a six-foot shadow prince before I’ve had caffeine is frankly more than my brain can process into an argument.
I wrap my hands around the mug. Hex sits opposite me, the same way he did last night over curry. Like it’s already a habit. Like we do this every morning. Like this is normal.
It’s not normal. None of this is normal.
I take a long sip of coffee and try to pull my scattered thoughts into some kind of order. Right. Okay. Let’s be sensible about this. Let’s think clearly.
Hex needs to feed. He’s been exiled from the Shadow Realm and stripped of his power. I’m his loophole. His lifeline. This is a practical arrangement, not a romantic one. He’s here because he has to be, not because Saturday morning domesticity with a Bristol barista is his idea of a good time.
A few weeks of this. Maybe a month. He’ll get his strength back, he’ll go and reclaim his throne, and I’ll be left here with my supermarket flowers and my crystals and a very good story I can never tell anyone.
That’s fine. That’s absolutely fine. I am twenty-six years old and I am perfectly capable of having a situationship with a shadow prince and coming out the other side intact.
People do this all the time. Well, not this specifically.
But the general concept. Enjoying something for what it is without expecting it to be something else.
I am very mature and sensible.
“You’re doing that thing,” says Hex.
I look up at him. “What thing?”
“That thing where you have a very intense conversation with yourself behind your eyes.” He rests his chin in one hand and regards me with that maddening expression.
Amused. Knowing. Like he can see straight through me to the conversation I’m having with myself and finds it adorable in a deeply patronising way. “What conclusions have you reached?”
“None of your business,” I say primly, and take another sip of coffee.
Hex smiles. It does terrible things to my composure.
“Fine,” he says. “I’ll tell you what you’ve concluded. You’ve decided this is temporary. A situationship. A mutually beneficial arrangement with a clear endpoint. You’ve told yourself you’re fine with that and are currently trying to believe it.”
I stare at him over the rim of my mug. “Can you actually read minds?”
“No.” His smile widens. “You’re just very transparent.”
“That’s rude.”
“It’s observant.”
“Same thing.”
He laughs, and the sound rolls through the kitchen and does absolutely nothing helpful to my attempts at sensible thinking. “You’re allowed to enjoy this without catastrophising it, you know.”
“I’m not catastrophising.”
“You’re sitting there planning your emotional exit strategy before you’ve even finished your morning coffee.”
I open my mouth. Close it again. He’s not wrong and I hate that he’s not wrong. It’s extremely annoying. He’s extremely annoying. I should find him less attractive when he’s being annoying. The fact that I don’t is its own specific problem.
“What are you doing today?” he asks, shifting gears with infuriating ease.
I groan. The sound comes out much more pitiful than I intend.
Hex raises an eyebrow. “That bad?”
“I have to go to my parents’ for dinner.” I slouch in my chair like a teenager being told they have to go somewhere terrible. “My cousin got engaged. There’s a dinner party. I have to go or my mother will never let me hear the end of it.”
“Ah.” Hex’s expression is sympathetic in a way that still somehow looks smug. “The dragon’s den.”
“You have no idea.” I wrap both hands tighter around my mug.
“I do,” says Hex, remarkably solemn.
I stare at him.
He shudders. “I remember your mother.”
My eyebrows rise. Of course. Hex is the same monster who lurked under my bed as a child. It’s strange how often I forget that.
“She was very thorough in jabbing her broom under your bed while loudly asserting nothing was there.”
Hex’s morose expression makes me smile. “Okay, you have some idea,” I concede.
I take a sip of coffee. Thoughts of the impending dinner party swirl through me, filling me with dread.
“My cousin James is a senior analyst at whatever. He’s the same age as me.
He went to the same school as me. He had the same opportunities as me.
I will be hearing about this constantly and at length. ”
“And you?”
“I’m a barista who lives in my uncle’s flat.” I smile tightly. “I’m the cautionary tale at the dinner party.”
“You’re extraordinary,” Hex says, his voice shifting into something lower. Something that sounds completely genuine rather than falsely flattering. “Anyone who can’t see that is an idiot.”
Heat floods my face. I look down at my coffee. “You have to say that. You’re feeding off me. You’re biased.”
“I say what I mean,” Hex says simply. “Always.”
I believe him. That’s the terrible thing.
I believe him completely because he’s never once softened anything for my benefit.
He told me I was a doormat. He told me I was transparent.
He called me adorable in the most infuriating way possible .
He doesn’t compliment me to make me feel better. He does it because he means it.
Which is somehow worse than if he was lying. If he was lying I could dismiss it.
“They’ll also ask about my love life,” I mutter, steering myself back onto safer ground. “Or rather, the complete absence of one. It’s their second favourite topic after James’s salary.”
“And what will you tell them?”
“Nothing. I’ll smile and deflect and eat my dinner and count down the minutes until I can leave.
” I pause. “Actually, I’ve had this fantasy.
Just once, I’d love to turn up with someone.
Just to see their faces.” I let out a short laugh that comes out more hollow than I mean it to. “I even looked at escorts once.”
Hex blinks. “You looked at escorts.”
“They were very expensive.” I hold up a hand before he can say anything. “Before you judge me, I was having a very bad week and I just wanted to see the look on my mother’s face when I walked in with someone who looked like he should be on the cover of a magazine. It’s not a crime.”
“It’s not,” Hex agrees, his voice completely neutral. “It’s actually very funny.”
“I’m glad my humiliation amuses you.”
“Everything about you amuses me.” He says it warmly enough that it doesn’t land as an insult. Almost. “So instead you’ll go alone and smile and deflect.”
“That’s the plan.” I drain the last of my coffee. “I mean, it’s not like I have many other options. I can hardly turn up with a shadow monster, can I.” I say it lightly, as a joke, because it is a joke, obviously. It’s absurd. It’s the most absurd thing I’ve ever said.
I don’t look at Hex when I say it.
I’m not entirely sure I want to see his expression.
“No,” Hex says, after a beat. “I suppose not.”
Something in his voice is very carefully even. I glance at him despite myself. His face gives nothing away. Those red eyes are steady and unreadable, which is somehow worse than when they’re full of amusement.
“Anyway.” I push back from the table and carry my mug to the sink. “You told me to use my claws. So I’ll try not to let them walk all over me. That’s something.”
“It’s everything,” Hex says quietly.
I rinse the mug out and don’t turn around, because my face is doing something I’d rather he didn’t see.
“Right,” I say to the sink. “I’m going to go and shower and try to look like a person.”
“You already look like a person.”
“A presentable person. One my mother can’t immediately find fault with, which is a higher bar.
” I grab a tea towel and dry my hands. “She’s going to be awful tonight.
She always is. But especially tonight because James got a promotion and got engaged, and I’m bringing nothing to the table except excellent latte art and a growing collection of crystals. ”
Hex makes a low sound that might be a laugh. “You’re bringing yourself. That should be more than enough.”
“Tell that to my mother.”
A pause. Something shifts in the quality of the silence, and when I finally turn around, Hex is watching me with that expression he gets sometimes. Soft around the edges, just for a moment. The one he thinks I don’t notice.
“Go and get ready,” he says softly.
I nod distractedly. My mind is doing several things at once. Making a mental list of everything I need to do before I leave. Bracing for the dinner party and the questions and the comparisons to James.
And underneath all of that, something quiet and warm that I’m definitely not going to name.
I rouse myself and step away from the sink. I’m almost at the kitchen door when I stop and turn back.
“Thank you,” I say. “For staying. This morning.”
Hex holds my gaze. For once, the smirk is absent. “I’ll always be here in the morning, Adam. For as long as I’m here.”
For as long as I’m here. The qualifier lands exactly where it’s supposed to. He’s not pretending otherwise. He’s not making promises he can’t keep. He’s giving me exactly as much truth as I can handle and leaving the rest up to me.
I nod. I turn and go.
It’s only once I’m under the shower, hot water running over my shoulders, that I notice something is different.
I’m still dreading tonight. I’m still going to walk into that house alone and field questions about my job and my flat and my complete failure to become James.
My mother is still going to be my mother, in full and spectacular form.
But underneath all the dread, something else has taken up residence. Something small and stubborn and warm. The memory of Hex’s voice, steady and certain. You’re extraordinary. Anyone who can’t see that is an idiot.
And more than that. The way he looked at me across the table this morning like I was worth looking at. Like he was in absolutely no hurry to be anywhere else.
I know what this is. I know where it ends. He’ll get strong enough, he’ll go back to the Shadow Realm, and this will be a story I can never tell anyone for the rest of my life. That’s fine. That’s the deal. I went in with my eyes open.
But tonight, when I’m standing in my awful family home, being compared unfavourably to my cousin, I’ll know that I woke up with someone this morning. That someone made me coffee and encouraged me to use my claws and meant it.
That’s something. Actually, that’s quite a lot.
I tilt my face up to the water and take a deep breath.
Right. Let’s go and be the cautionary tale. With considerably better posture than usual.